ABSTRACT
Leaving aside the depth of the present crisis, one of the greatest obstacles facing science and technology policy design in Mexico arises from the difficulty to assess the impact of industrialization policies on science and technology development. Since science and technology planning has not been regarded as essential for development, the initiatives aimed at the achievement of the technological self-reliance have never gone far beyond rhetorics. Whatever its state of science and technology one has to remember that Mexico has undergone, since World War II, a broad transformation on many fronts. A serious economic crisis in 1982 makes the future of science and technology even more difficult. The crisis brought serious economic and financial restrictions which affect negatively national scientific and technological efforts. Although the state has been modernized also to a certain extent it remains locked within a one party system which has been designed for the mostly rural Mexico of the late 1920s.
